


when you were here before (quiet and calm)

by apolliades



Category: Original Work
Genre: ... i don't know what's going on with these tags whatsoever, Abuse, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Boyfriend Simulator, Death, Drowning, Ghost Boyfriend Simulator, Ghosts, I Don't Even Know, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Murder, Suicide Attempt, Unhealthy Relationships, fictional scottish towns, ghost kisses, mysteries abound in this trainwreck of a fic, not really that's like this project's codename or something, or was it manslaughter?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-13
Updated: 2017-03-13
Packaged: 2018-10-03 20:28:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10257353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apolliades/pseuds/apolliades
Summary: he’d read it somewhere, or maybe heard it in a documentary, something like that. drowning was quiet and calm.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [barium](https://archiveofourown.org/users/barium/gifts).



> i wrote most of this all at once in a day and it made me wish i was dead thanks adam. not even slightly proofread for mistakes/coherency.
> 
> pls leave kudos i thrive on attention!

Dying was cold. Michael had expected that, he’d known it would be, but when it came to dying, knowing in theory how something would be and actually, truly _experiencing_ it were proving to be two vastly different things. He’d known it would be cold. But he’d never been able to imagine it would be this cold. 

He’d thought he’d known what it was like to be cold. Growing up in the north, living his whole life in a country that rained or sleeted or stormed far more often than it did anything else — Michael had thought he’d known what it was like to be cold. 

But the chill of the water had been such a shock, had hit as hard as a physical blow, making him gasp in the last half-second before his head ducked under, eyes wide, gulping like a fish, open-closed-open-closed, uselessly. 

The water closed over him just like he’d imagined it would, though. Like night drawing in, like the moon passing over the sun, the light left, and Michael stilled, and everything became peaceful. Quiet and calm. That was why he’d chosen to do it this way — he’d read it somewhere, or maybe heard it in a documentary, something like that. Drowning was quiet and calm. 

Michael sank, at first, curled up into himself like a rock, fingers twisted into his shirt as the cold turned them numb — he’d decided against going in naked, after standing on the jetty debating over it for a good five minutes. In films, people always seemed to drown themselves naked, leaving their shoes and clothes and perhaps a note in a neat, tragic little pile at the water’s edge. Michael had never understood why. He sank, at first, gazing up as the water stung his eyes, through the murky green-blue and the algae scum, up to the faint glow of light that was the waxing moon he’d left behind. Its rays were reaching for him, stretching out through the water like a white hand. He watched the glow, and watched the bubbles that left his mouth flee to the surface — his last breath, he thought. How strange that he could witness it so clearly. That he could _see_ the life leaving him. 

With every moment that passed the cold was settling in in earnest. No longer burning his skin, it had buried itself deeper than that, settling heavy into his bones, curling like smoke around his insides, making his muscles twitch and his chest tighten and the back of his skull begin to ache. It _hurt,_ it was so cold. But it wouldn’t for long, he was sure of that. He held onto that, as the seconds ticked by and his lungs began to burn at their emptiness. It wouldn’t be much longer, he was sure, just until his body used up what little air the cold hadn’t knocked out of him, and then he was sure, he was _sure,_ it would be just like falling asleep. 

As it turned out, drowning was also pretty damn difficult to do on purpose, in still water, and being a capable swimmer. And it was nothing at all like falling asleep. Because even boys who thought they were determined to die had survival instincts, whether they wanted them or not, and Michael’s kicked in just at the moment he thought his chest was about to explode. He shot to the surface like a cork, and his quiet calm shattered with the water breaking over his head. 

Suddenly he felt panic where there hadn’t been panic before. This wasn’t — this wasn’t what was supposed to be happening. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. His head was above water now and he was gasping again, gulping down just as much water into his stomach as he was sucking air into his lungs and it burned, it burned it was so cold. The edge of the jetty was still right there where he’d left it, within arm’s reach, damp weak wood slippery under his hands, moss and mould clogging up under his fingernails where he scrabbled for purchase — this wasn’t how it was supposed to be. It wasn’t supposed to be a fight. 

Cold was sapping the strength from his arms. So maybe he would drown, after all. The irony wasn’t lost on him, even then — in some corner of his frantic, screaming brain, it was kind of funny. That he wouldn’t be able to die until he stopped wanting to. 

Something wrenched Michael out of the water and deposited him face-down on the jetty in a rush. For a moment, dazed and dizzy and lightheaded from lack of breath, he couldn’t quite register what had happened. It was indescribably disorientating, to one second be surrounded by water and nothing but, the next on wet but solid ground, reeling. For a moment, he wondered whether some god had taken pity on him. Perhaps Poseidon had left his ocean floor palace and taken up residency in this icy little loch in some shitty town in the north of Scotland instead. Maybe it was adrenaline. More likely, but still — 

“Fuck,” said someone, and while Michael wasn’t exactly an expert, even giddy as he was he thought he could be fairly sure the voice didn’t belong to the god of the sea. 

“Fuck,” said the someone again, “fuck, are you alright?” 

Dimly, Michael was aware the question was probably addressed to him. He coughed weakly into the wood against his cheek. A mouthful of water burned on its way out of his throat. 

“Hey, can you hear me? Can you _see_ me?” 

He didn’t want to look up. Whoever it was sounded anxious, an accent not far from his own laden with worry, and Michael didn’t want to have to turn and face _anyone_ , let alone have to explain himself to a stranger. He supposed this person was the mysterious saviour that had raised him from the water. He supposed he should be grateful. But he didn’t feel grateful. He felt sick. His skin was so cold, now, that the tears tracking down his cheeks were searing. 

With a Herculean effort, Michael rolled onto his back, and blinked until the water cleared from his eyes. Standing over him was a boy who couldn’t have been much older than his late teens, looking distressed but surprisingly dry. Michael decided to rule Poseidon out of the equation altogether. 

“Can you see me?” 

Part of Michael wanted to ask exactly what reason there could possibly be for him _not_ being able to see someone who was standing less than three feet away from his head, unless he was actually blind — but he didn’t. Didn’t really have the will, much less the energy. Instead, he coughed again, drew a slightly raspy breath, and answered, “Yes.” 

At first the boy almost looked startled, like he hadn’t really been expecting an answer, but that only lasted a second before he relaxed into visible relief, shoulders sagging. Michael squinted at him. He wasn’t sure if it was the water making his vision a little blurry, or the tears stinging his eyes, but it was kind of hard to look directly at this boy. His gaze kept trying to wander away. It was like trying to stare into the sun. Even when he dropped into a crouch to get closer, Michael had the strangest urge to turn his face away. 

“But you’re alright?” the boy asked again, putting out a hand like he might touch Michael’s forehead, before drawing it back again. Michael couldn’t imagine what sort of answer he was expecting; _well, you just saved me from what was probably the world’s most pathetic suicide attempt, but yeah, I’m excellent, thanks for asking._ “You’re— breathing, still got a pulse, everything like that? Shit, you don’t need an ambulance, do you? ‘cause I— uh, don’t have a phone, or anything, so—”

“I’m fine,” Michael croaked, not because it was even close to being true, but because he wanted the boy to stop talking. Stop talking, turn around and _go,_ and leave him to be miserable on his own, to maybe lie there until the cold set in and finished what the water hadn’t.

But the boy looked unconvinced. He was frowning — Michael could make out that much, even with his vision hazy, could make out the shadowy lines of the boy’s face where the pale moonlight glinted off his features. 

“Are you sure?” he pressed, inching a little closer. “You could’ve drowned.”

 _Could’ve._ Didn’t, though. Didn’t even get close. 

“Hey, you’re shaking.” 

Michael frowned then, too. He lifted a hand, slowly, so he could see the trembling of his fingers. Oh. So he was. He looked at the boy again, the boy who was still looking at him. “I’m cold.” 

—

Eventually, Michael got up. It didn’t take all that long, really, because the boy wouldn’t leave, just kept hovering over him and mumbling in concern, putting Michael’s half-baked plan to lie there ’til he died of hypothermia to rest. And as the initial shock and lightheadedness of the whole thing began to wear off, embarrassment was setting in. Worse than that. Humiliation. Shame, at being found in a state so weak, so abjectly pathetic. It reminded him distantly of being thirteen and getting drunk for the first time, and being sick, and his mother finding him and holding him and shushing him while he cried and hiccuped and wanted nothing else but to be left alone. 

He was storming up the verge with as much determination as he could muster, which admittedly wasn’t a whole lot, by then. Like his mother had refused to leave him be when he’d been thirteen and on the edge of alcohol poisoning, this boy didn’t seem to be going anywhere, either. He was trailing after Michael like a needy puppy, looking anxious and asking him question after question, even when he was met with nothing but silence. 

_Are you alright?_

_Can you hear me? Where are you going?_

_Are you alright?_

_Are you alright?_

_Are you alright?_

Michael’s head was throbbing, and the boy’s soft, quick, persistent voice wasn’t helping. It felt like he’d been clocked across the back of the skull, a deep chill ache, and his stomach was rolling with the quantity of loch water he’d gulped into it, or anxiety, or both. 

In fairness, he probably wouldn’t have been able to answer if he’d wanted to. His teeth were chattering too hard to let words out between them. 

When they reached the gate that led to the road home, the boy planted himself in Michael’s path and wouldn’t move. Michael, shaking, water running down the back of his neck, glowered feebly up at him. 

“Listen,” the boy said to him, in a voice that was aiming for firm, but missed the mark by a stretch and landed somewhere around desperation. “I’m pretty sure I just saved your fucking life. Could you at least talk to me?” 

Something nasty sank sharp claws into Michael’s insides. This boy was right, whoever he was. He’d saved Michael’s life. Just a stranger, but he’d saved his _life,_ even if— even if Michael hadn’t wanted to be saved.

Part of him wanted to stay. Talk to him, ask him his name, what the fuck he’d even been doing out there on the jetty in the middle of the night, what other possible reason could anyone have if it wasn’t the same as Michael’s own. Thank him, too, even if it was for something he hadn’t wanted in the first place. At least he could be polite. 

But the words weren’t coming. Just misery, and sickness, and the longing to be home and if he couldn’t be dead at _least_ to be asleep in his own bed. So Michael swallowed hard against the latest wave of nausea and spat out, “You shouldn’t have fucking bothered.” 

He pushed past, shoved the gate open too hard, left the boy to gaze wordlessly after him as the dark swallowed him up. 

—

Ciaran was still sleeping when Michael got home, sneaking in through the back like a kid past curfew. He didn’t bother to shower or do anything at all but peel off his wet clothes and drag on dry pyjamas before he crawled into bed, fitting himself into the narrow space left where Ciaran wasn’t, not touching. Fuck it if he’d still smell like the loch in the morning, fuck it if there were weeds and dirt in his hair, fuck it if Ciaran would question him for it. He couldn’t care. How could he? How could he care about anything in the whole world anymore? 

Something had roused Ciaran a little in his sleep — the dipping of the mattress under Michael’s weight, or the shifting of the covers, maybe. Could’ve been the smell of damp and verdure he brought into the bed with him. Or maybe it was whatever strange sixth sense he seemed to possess that told him whenever Michael did something he didn’t like. 

“Mikey?” Ciaran’s voice was soft and thick with sleep, but the sound of it still made Michael wince. He squeezed his eyes tighter shut, curled closer in on himself and tried to still the shivers still shaking his bones, tried to force his breathing to even out into some semblance of sleep. 

Either it worked, or Ciaran hadn’t really woken up at all. Either way, Michael was too exhausted, too drained both in body and soul to give a single ounce of a shit. Ciaran was quiet, and that was what mattered. Michael pressed his face into the pillow, dragged the duvet right up to his nose in a lame attempt at blocking out the smell of the loch that clung to him. The smell of Ciaran’s aftershave wasn’t all that much better, but at least it was familiar, and clean. Michael drifted to sleep wondering if maybe, just maybe, there wasn’t still a change that he might just die after all.

—

Michael didn’t die. But he woke the next morning to a fever that blazed, to a knot in his gut that twisted and tore like something was trying to rip his insides out, to Ciaran fretting over him, calling him _baby,_ stroking his hair and mopping away the ice cold sweat that rose to his brow and chased itself in rivulets down the side of his face. 

He was sick for a week. He wanted to die more than ever. 

—

In the early hours of Monday morning his fever broke, and Michael woke up tired and empty and still, regrettably, very much alive. Ciaran had dragged a spare mattress alongside the bed to sleep on for the duration of Michael’s sickness, because his nights had been spent sweating and tossing and turning and moaning and even Ciaran, devoted Ciaran, couldn’t share a bed with that. 

His hand rested on the mattress, though, by Michael’s pillow. Michael reached for it when he woke, groggy and half-asleep still. With an unsteady fingertip he traced the blue veins showing faint under Ciaran’s skin, followed the bumps of his knuckles, lingered on the little scar from where he’d put his fist through a window last year and the glass had torn him open. 

Michael used to kiss him there, used to catch Ciaran by the wrist and put his fingers to his mouth and kiss the healing wound as if that would make it better. As if in doing so he could heal everything else, too. Fix everything that had made him smash the glass in the first place. 

Ciaran murmured in his sleep. His hand slipped out from under Michael’s as he turned. Michael watched him a moment, then sat up, bunched the blank around his shoulders like a cloak, and stepped over Ciaran’s sleeping form on his way out of the room. 

— 

Logically, there was no real reason for Michael to go back to the jetty. Logically, there was no reason whatsoever for him to expect to find the boy there again, except that he’d been there once in the middle of the night at just at the exact moment Michael had needed him— no. There was no reason he’d be there again. But Michael went anyway. If nothing else, at least he’d be able to breathe clean air. 

It was almost as if the cold were leading him, as he left the flat and followed the road out of town, as if the wind were hands at his back, fingers tugging at his jacket. It was dark, once he left the pavement, went through the kissing gate onto the footpath, into the trees, but his phone with its torch stayed undisturbed in his pocket. The dark didn’t seem to matter. He was sure, somehow, that even if he closed his eyes and let himself walk blind, he’d find the way just the same. He’d felt that way even the first time he’d walked there, the day after he’d moved to Domhuisge, the day he met Ciaran. 

Michael paused at the second gate, the one that was half rotten and falling off its hinges and almost overtaken by gorse and bramble thorns, and laid his hand on the rain-damp wood. This was where he’d met Ciaran, two years ago. This exact spot. Ciaran had been upset — he’d been crying, or he’d just stopped. Hadn’t seen Michael standing there and had knocked him flat on his back with how hard he’d thrown the gate open. He’d tripped over himself to apologise, of course, pulled Michael up out of the mud and brushed him off saying _I’m sorry, fuck, I’m so sorry, I didn’t see you._ When Michael had said it was alright, asked if _he_ was okay, Ciaran had gotten this look on his face. This small slow smile. Like something bright was just dawning on him. 

They’d walked home together that day. Just to the door — Michael’s parents hadn’t wanted any visitors whole the house was still full of boxes — and Ciaran had kissed him right there on the front step. Light and soft and quick, a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it kiss, a kiss that had left Michael closed-eyed and open-mouthed and leaning into nothing even after Ciaran had disappeared back down the road. 

Whirlwind romance. That was what Michael’s mother had called it. 

Michael swung open the gate and stepped down onto the grass verge. The ground was damp-soft — he could feel it sinking slightly beneath his shoes with each step. He’d never been back here with Ciaran, not once. Once, he’d suggested it, that they go back there for their six month anniversary. Ciaran had snapped, so suddenly it could’ve given Michael whiplash.

_“There? Why would we go there?”_

_“I don’t know, it’s— where we met, isn’t it, I thought it would be— I don’t know, romantic, or something.”_

_“No. It wouldn’t— we’re not going there. Why would you say that, Mikey?”_

_“It was just an idea.”_

_“An idea? What was wrong with my ideas? Weren’t they good enough?”_

_“I didn’t mean it like that. I’m sorry, Ciaran. No, I’m sorry. Ciaran. Ciaran. Please.”_

_—_

The water was almost still as Michael sat at the edge of the jetty, legs folded under himself, resolutely ignoring the damp soaking steadily into his jeans. The wind barely blew rippled across it, but looking out to the water was still enough to make his heart stutter with the first sparks of panic. Gone was the pervasive urge to let himself fall in, to disappear under the surface, replaced by an uncomfortable tugging at his spine to _go._ To get away. 

Michael ignored it, and sat there quiet and still but for his shivering, watching the moon cast halos across the loch, as perfect and clear as if it were glass. 

“I hope you’re not thinking of trying again.” 

He had no idea how long he’d been sitting there, spaced out, when the voice broke through the still, making him jump half out of his skin. There had been no footsteps to warn him. 

“Sorry,” said the boy — for it was him, just as before, and this time he was sitting himself down beside Michael on the end of the jetty as casual as anything, mirroring his cross-legged posture. “I didn’t mean to scare you. You’re not, though, are you?” 

Michael forced himself to exhale slowly, through his nose. Bring his breathing and his spiked pulse back under control before he turned to the boy beside him. Admittedly his memories from that night a week ago were more than a little fuzzy, only obscured further by the time he’d spent wrapped up in fever-dreams since, but Michael was pretty sure the boy looked almost exactly as he had last time they’d met. And like last time there was that strange urge to look away from him, look past him, like he wasn’t really there. 

He was smiling, though, a little ruefully. Michael could make that much out, at least. The moonlight illuminated the boy’s expression, etching it out in perfect clarity. Michael dropped his gaze anyway, down to where his hands rested in his lap. His fingertips glowed from the cold. He didn’t answer the question. He didn’t want to lie — but he wasn’t sure what the truth was, either. 

“Who are you?” Michael asked, quietly. On the back of his thumb there was a scab that he was worrying at with a fingernail, so when he looked up it was just in time to catch the boy’s expression shifting, rearranging itself into a frown. It was so long before he answered that Michael was beginning to think he wasn’t going to at all. 

“Callum,” he said, at last, finally ceasing chewing on his lip for long enough to speak. “I’m Callum, and— fuck it, I suppose there’s no point in lying to you really, is there? I— I’m dead.” 

Michael blinked. He straightened slightly, certain that he must have heard wrong. The way the boy had said he might have been introducing himself at an Alcoholic’s Anonymous meeting.

_Hi, I’m Callum, and I’m dead._

_Everyone chiming in: Hi, Callum._

He blinked again. Callum was staring at him with his lip between his teeth, his face lined with expectant anxiousness. 

“You’re what?” Michael asked, dumbly. 

“I’m _dead,_ ” Callum repeated, and he almost sounded like he didn’t quite believe it himself, either. “I have been for a while, I think. I mean, it’s hard to tell. I don’t really have a good way to measure time, but— it _feels_ like it’s been a while. I think— you don’t believe me, do you?” 

Michael almost wanted to laugh. “No,” he said, truthfully. 

Callum was quiet a moment, during which Michael let his gaze drift to some point over his shoulder until he spoke again. “Hold up your hand. Do it, hold up your hand.” 

Forcing himself to focus again, slowly, Michael did. Reflecting him Callum did the same, until their hands met in the middle of the space between them. The moment Callum’s fingertips touched his skin, Michael felt the sudden, unmistakable sensation that he’d just plunged his hand into cold water. It was so sharp and unexpected it made him gasp — the chill travelled right up his arm ’til it touched his chest, but he didn’t draw back. For Callum was passing his fingers through Michael’s palm as if he wasn’t even there. 

Watching it made his head spin. And when he closed his eyes, focused on the feeling alone, it was almost like white noise, at the points where Callum’s hand intersected his own. Like pins and needles, almost. Like his nerves weren’t able to process what was happening, and had just given up instead. 

“How are you doing that?” Michael asked, at last, unable to raise his voice above a murmur. His heart was pounding fiercely in his chest — Callum’s hand had stilled, pressed open-palmed against his own. “How..?” 

“I don’t know,” Callum confessed, sounding a little pained. Like he’d been asking himself the same question over and over without coming to an answer. “I just— know I’m _dead_. It’s not like there’s a— fucking _guidebook_.” 

Michael opened his eyes again, looked to their hands. Callum was looking at him, fixedly, like he was waiting for him to say something. Say _anything._

Just as he opened his mouth his phone rang, vibrating into life in his pocket with a burst of sound that made every muscle in his body seize up. He swore, fumbling it out of his pocket with cold-clumsy hands.

“Where are you, Mikey?” Ciaran’s voice was anxious and harsh on the other end of the line. “You left, it’s the middle of the night, where are you?” 

“Calm down, Ciaran, please.” Michael was already getting to his feet. Still crosslegged, Callum looked up at him, sharply. “I’m coming home. I just needed— I’m coming back, Ciaran, I just wanted some air. Ciaran, please—”

His hands shook as he paced back up the jetty, as fast as he could manage without slipping on the slick wood. Ciaran’s voice was an onslaught that Michael had long since learned to only half-listen to, tuning out the most of it, listening in only for anything important, murmuring pleas and apologies in the brief moments Ciaran stopped for breath. 

He was at the gate when he felt the unmistakable touch of Callum’s on — no, _in_ his back, sending ice chill cascading down his spine. It stole every ounce of breath from his lungs, made him shudder and go still. Callum was in front of him then, though Michael hadn’t seen him move — empty space one second was boy the next. Warmth returned to Michael’s body in an unsettling rush. 

“Come back,” Callum said, looking at him with wide eyes the colour of moonlight, imploring and forlorn. “Please come back.” 

Michael hesitated a moment. Ciaran’s voice was still flooding his ears, urgent and distracting. Even now, he couldn’t quite look at Callum. 

“Please.” 

Michael stepped right through him to reach the gate. He didn’t look back, even when Callum’s voice followed him like an echo up the path. 

—

Ciaran was waiting for him on the other side of the kissing gate, eyes wild, still in his pyjamas, without even a coat against the night air. He looked distraught. He looked crazed. 

“Fuck.” The sudden sight of him made Michael start, pressing a hand to his chest, his heart already beating too fast from — from everything. “Ciaran, what are you doing here?” _How did you know_ I’d _be here?_

“Your phone,” Ciaran snapped, matter-of-factly, and something unpleasant twisted in Michael’s stomach. He’d tracked his fucking phone? While Michael stuttered helplessly Ciaran was shoving through the gate, grabbing Michael by the front of his jacket and trying to drag him through the gap designed for just one person, not two. It was too narrow — the corners scraped and snagged at him but he knew better than to try to push Ciaran off. Not when he was like this. His voice was near hysterical, rising with every word. “Why here, Mikey? Why did you come here? Why here?” 

“There’s no reason, Ciaran, I just— I was just walking, that’s all, I—”

Trying to make Ciaran listen when he was anxious like this was utterly, hopelessly futile — it was like his emotions rendered him deaf. So Michael got his arms around him instead, the moment they were through the gate. Wrapped him up tight and pressed his face into Ciaran’s shoulder, laid his hands flat against his back, forced them both to be still. Ciaran’s hands flew to Michael’s neck. His fingers twisted hard into the collar of his jacket. He was shaking. They both were. Too hard to chalk it up to the just cold. 

“You mustn’t leave me like that, Mikey,” Ciaran murmured, his mouth by Michael’s ear, breath ruffling his hair so it tickled. “You scared me. You scared me, Mikey.” 

“I’m sorry.” Michael’s voice was muffled where his face was squashed in against the curve of Ciaran’s shoulder. His skin felt cold. “I just didn’t want to wake you. Didn’t want to disturb you.” That, at least, wasn’t a lie. 

Ciaran clutched him closer, wrapped an arm around his ribs so tight Michael thought they might break under the pressure. “Don’t come here again,” Ciaran told him. His voice was thick and wavering and Michael was sure that if he looked up at him now, he’d see tears. “Don’t you ever come back here again, Mikey. There’s nothing good here.” 

—

Ciaran left for work the next morning, and the moment he was certain he was gone, Michael went back. He was calling out Callum’s name before he was barely through the second gate, kicking up mud from the verge as he ran for the jetty.

He’d left his phone behind. He hadn’t asked Ciaran, the night before, exactly what he’d meant when he’d said that was how he’d found him. He hadn’t asked what he’d meant by _there’s nothing good here_ either — and he was pretty sure that he wouldn’t have gotten an answer even if he had. Ciaran had barely spoken a word to him after that. Just pushed him up against the door the second it was closed and kissed him hard enough to hurt, pinned him to the mattress and made him promise not to leave over and over again in between frantic gasps for breath. 

When he’d woken up that morning Michael had been half-expecting to find the doors locked and his key gone. 

As soon as the last syllable of his name left Michael’s mouth, Callum was there, rushing up the jetty to meet him. 

“What happened?” he asked, stopping just where the jetty met land, barely a foot in front of Michael. Michael, who was breathless from running, while Callum — he didn’t seem to be breathing at all. Which made sense, Michael supposed, seeing as he was dead. “Are you okay?” 

Michael let himself drop to the ground, flopping back against the verge. It was dry, for a change — the first cloudless day Domhuisge had seen in a while. Callum hesitated a moment, then lay out alongside him. The slightest brush of their shoulders raised goosebumps all the way up and down Michael’s arm. 

“Sorry,” Callum murmured, shifting away. His movements were utterly soundless. 

Michael turned to look at him, concentrated hard on keeping his gaze on his face, not letting it slip away. Looking at him was still strange, though. Like having a word on the tip of his tongue but just not quite being able to say it. If he turned away, or so much as closed his eyes, he’d forget what Callum looked like. “It’s alright,” he told him, and closed the space between them again, despite the cold. If Callum had had blood in him then, he might’ve blushed.

They were quiet for a minute. Michael closed his eyes and let himself feel the heat of the sun on his face and the chill of Callum beside him and the steady beat of his pulse where his palms were flat on the ground. Let himself be still. Just for a minute. 

“Something happened here.” Michael spoke slowly, forced himself to do so, to choose his words carefully. For he wasn’t quite sure exactly what he was going to ask, but he knew that whatever it was, the answer mattered. It mattered maybe more than anything else ever had. His pulse was picking up again. “Did you die here, Callum?” 

Beside him, Callum was silent and still. When he did speak, his voice was soft and hesitant. Aiming for humour, falling hopelessly short. “That’s a little personal, don’t you think? I mean— we just met. I don’t even know your name.” 

Michael turned to him again. Callum was looking at him, his eyes wide and his brows drawn together, and he almost looked afraid. How long had he been here, Michael wondered, cold and on his own. For all he knew, Michael was the first person Callum had spoken to since he died. For all he knew he’d been lost out here for years. 

“My name’s Michael,” he said, and Callum smiled. 

—

So for that morning, Michael put his questions aside. For the sake of the look on Callum’s face when Michael did something so easy as indulging him in conversation — for the way he seemed to light up, lean closer. How long had he been starved of such a simple thing, Michael wondered. What had it been like, to be alone like that. He couldn’t imagine. Couldn’t possibly. It still hadn’t truly sunk in that Callum was dead. 

And that only became harder to believe the longer they lay there, side by side, talking about nothing. Making each other laugh, even, once the atmosphere between them relaxed a little. Callum laughed like he was alive. He told stories so vivid that it was impossible to believe he was anything but. He almost seemed to forget, too, until at one point he reached out to brush a strand of hair back from Michael’s face and his fingers went straight through. 

“Can’t you touch people?” Michael asked him, as the warmth returned to the side of his face. Callum wasn’t looking at him anymore. They were sitting up now, both of them, and Callum gave a halfhearted shrug. He was staring down into his lap.

“No. Yeah. Sometimes, I don’t know. I don’t know how it works.” He shrugged again, despondent. 

“But you pulled me out of the loch, didn’t you?” Michael pressed. He shifted closer and Callum lifted his head, glanced up at him through his lashes. For a moment Michael could look at him perfectly clearly. The second he blinked, he lost focus again — but for that moment, just that moment. Callum had been startlingly beautiful. 

“I guess so, yeah. But I don’t— I don’t know how I did it. I don’t know if I moved you or I moved the water, or— something else, even. I don’t know.” Callum laughed softly. “I’ve never even been able to get anyone to see me, before you.” 

His words were so quiet, and so lonely, Michael’s heart ached with how badly he wanted to comfort him. 

“Callum—” he started, without knowing what he was going to say — but Callum cut him off with a smile and a wave of his hand. 

“It’s alright,” he said, “Doesn’t matter.”

He dragged the subject back to something more inane, and settled back against the grass again, and Michael let him. 

They talked, and they talked and they talked until Michael’s voice was hoarse from it. They talked more than he thought he’d ever talked with one person before, let alone all at once. They worked out that Callum had been dead for three years, so he hadn’t missed too much. It meant he’d been Michael’s age when he’d died, which was more than a little unsettling to think about — but they didn’t dwell on it. Michael filled him in on the more exciting bits of news he could remember from the last three years, which wasn’t much, and they kept the conversation mostly away from dying. 

The pressing urge to ask questions was still there — the sense that there was something, something important he needed to know didn’t _fade —_ but Michael stowed it quietly at the back of his mind, for now. Tomorrow, he’d come back, and he’d ask then. Today was for talking. 

By the time Michael got up to leave, the light was fading, and he could barely feel his fingers from the cold, and his bones felt stiff from lying so long on the ground. It was the last glint of sunlight behind the trees that had him startling upright, anxiety seizing him all of a sudden like a hand about his throat. 

Ciaran was waiting for him back at their flat, his eyes red and his cheeks damp and his face stony and set, hunched up on the sofa with the lights still out, even though the sun had almost set. Michael’s heart was in his throat as he went to him, hands outstretched, his “sorry”s already in his mouth. Ciaran wouldn’t speak to him. Wouldn’t even look at him. When Michael tried to kiss him, Ciaran brought the back of his hand down hard across Michael’s cheek. 

It shocked him enough that he barely registered the pain until later, when he was curled up alone on the sofa trying to sleep, and he could feel the ache of a bruise blossoming under his skin. 

—

In the morning his key was gone. 

—

One of the more strangely specific perks of living in a town so small it was barely noticeable on a map was that when someone died of anything more unusual than old age or the various illnesses that went along with it, it was big news. 

Searching for _deaths in domhuisge 2014_ turned up a badly formatted news website which had held onto the same layout since its inception at some point in the early 2000s, which consisted of pages upon pages of obituaries in a font so tiny it made Michael’s eyes hurt to look at it. No Callums had died in 2014. At least, none had made it onto the list. 

Not expecting too much, Michael tried _callum domhuisge 2014._ He felt his heart skip a beat the exact moment the page loaded. 

There was Callum, smiling up at him from the screen, under _suggested images,_ sourced from a Facebook page — the picture was a slightly blurry one, made worse by the shoddy internet connection, but it was him. Beyond a shadow of a doubt. And here, Michael could actually look at him. At his bright beaming grin full of teeth, splitting his face in two with the sheer joy of it, making his eyes scrunch up in the corners. Green eyes. Callum had green eyes. 

Michael tore his gaze away and looked to the first search result. A missing person notice, dated early 2014, for Callum McGregor, 20 years old. Michael clicked it open. 

The photograph this time was different. An ID picture, by the look of it; Callum looking blank-faced and mildly bored against a greyish background, brown curls pushed haphazardly back off his face. Somehow Michael couldn’t quite bring himself to read through the details. His vision was beginning to blur — there was heat prickling the backs of his eyes. Callum was still missing. No one — no one _else_ — even knew he was dead. 

Google only turned up a small handful more results. A plea from an Iain McGregor for any information about the whereabouts of his grandson. A Facebook page for Callum, set to friends-only. A notice in the local paper of the death of Iain McGregor barely six months after Callum disappeared. Grief stabbed its way into Michael’s chest. He dug the heels of his hands into his eyes, scrunching them shut against the tears stinging there. 

Apart from his grandfather, nothing gave even a hint that Callum had any other living relatives. No one else — no one else to be looking for him. Michael closed his laptop and let his head fall against the desk. Aching with the effort not to cry, for this boy, who was practically a stranger, for this ghost who was so utterly alone, more alone even than he knew — for his Iain McGregor, too, who had to die without knowing what had happened to his grandson, without knowing he was dead, without knowing if he was somewhere suffering, if something awful had happened, or if he’d just decided to leave one day, abandon him without saying a word. 

Michael gave up trying not to cry. He’d never been good at fighting it. 

—

It was only a couple of hours later, when he’d composed himself a little and had a shower and enough coffee to feel more like a human being again, that Michael went back to clear his browser history — just in case, because if Ciaran was able to track his phone somehow, then god knew what else he might have been doing — that he paused on Callum’s Facebook page, and his gaze was drawn to one little line of text that said, _1 Mutual Friend._

A frown crossed Michael’s face. It wasn’t that far-fetched, he supposed — he’d moved to Domhuisge a little over a year after Callum had gone missing. Anyone from the town could’ve reasonably had both him and Michael as friends on Facebook. 

Anyone could’ve. Only it wasn’t _anyone_ who did. It was Ciaran. 

It shouldn’t have been out of the ordinary, really. Ciaran had lived in Domhuisge all his life, as far as Michael knew — they probably went to school together. It would’ve been perfectly reasonable for them to even have been friends. But something about it made Michael feel strange nonetheless. Like he was seeing something he shouldn’t have been. It sent a shiver up his spine, put a strange taste into his mouth — he closed the tab with a shudder, made triple sure that he’d scoured every last trace of Callum’s name from his laptop. 

—

Rain was thundering against the bedroom window, and they were both pretending it was the sound of it keeping them awake. Not the tension straining the air between them, not the faint red-purple bruise on Michael’s cheekbone that Ciaran couldn’t seem to look away from, not the whole raft of unanswered questions burning Michael up from inside out. They lay there facing one another, unable to sleep, blaming the rain. 

Ciaran reached to trace his fingertips over the bruise for what had to be the hundredth time in the last half an hour. He’d done it so many times Michael had stopped flinching, his expression unreadable in the half-light, but his eyes intense. Michael closed his eyes and exhaled through his nose and pretended Ciaran’s touch didn’t sting. 

“I’m sorry, Mikey,” he said, in a whisper, for the hundredth time. “Do you forgive me?” 

“Of course, Ciar,” Michael lied, in a whisper, for the hundredth time.

—

Another week passed before Michael found the courage to slip out of the flat while Ciaran was at work. Another week, too, before Ciaran trusted him enough not to take his key away with him when he left. Michael took his phone this time, set to flight mode, so he could set an alarm to remind him to get the fuck home before Ciaran would be back. 

Callum was waiting for him at the end of the jetty, looking distant and a little unfocused with the loch stretching out behind him. Michael’s first instinct when he saw him was to go to him and hug him. How strange it was to have to remember that he couldn’t. He offered a smile instead, stopping where the grass became wood, and Callum beamed right back at him. It reminded Michael so much of the photograph he’d found, it ached. 

“I didn’t mean to stay away for so long,” Michael said, shrugging out of his jacket to use as a makeshift blanket to sit on. “I’m sorry.”

Callum’s smile turned rueful. “S’okay. I can’t really tell, when I’m on my own. Time’s a bit, uh, tricky.” He shrugged, and flopped weightlessly to the ground beside Michael. Eyes closed, he turned his face to the sky. Michael wondered if he could still feel the warmth of the sun, being as he was. It didn’t seem right to ask, though. Not with the other questions he was planning to put to Callum that afternoon. 

“I looked you up on the internet,” Michael said, after a few minutes of silence that seemed far more comfortable for Callum than for him. “I googled you.” 

“Really?” Callum looked over to him, mildly bemused. Gaze fixed straight ahead, Michael nodded. 

“Callum McGregor,” he said, slowly. “You went missing in February, 2014.” 

With every word out of Michael’s mouth, Callum was looking rapidly less comfortable. 

“Did I?” Callum’s voice was quiet. “Fuck.” 

Michael nodded again. There was a lump rising into his throat the size of his fist, too big to swallow down. It wasn’t so cold, not with the sun out, but he felt himself trembling. He couldn’t look at the boy beside him. 

“Nobody knows you’re dead, Callum.” 

His words hung heavy in the air between them for so long Michael began to regret ever having given them voice. 

“Fuck,” Callum said again, eventually. There was a crack in his voice. 

“You just— disappeared.” 

Callum didn’t say anything at all to that. Michael had to glance at him just to make sure he was still there. The cruelty of his words, that had evaded him when he’d spoken, was creeping up on him, now. He thought of Callum’s grandfather and bit his tongue. 

When Michael spoke again it was to say “I’m sorry.” 

Neither of them said a word for what felt like a very long time. It was Michael who broke the quiet, in the end. Couldn’t help it. There was too much, too much he needed to ask, to know. Too many suspicions to be laid to rest. Even if it hurt. 

“How did you die, Callum?” 

Callum’s silence stretched on for minute after minute. Michael’s head was ringing with the weight of it.

“I don’t know. I thought I drowned. Because I’m here, aren’t I? Stuck here by this fucking loch. So I thought I must’ve drowned. But I don’t know. I can’t remember.” 

They fell quiet again. 

“Since I answered your question, do I get to ask you one?” Callum ventured, after a while, as if it were a game. Michael couldn’t imagine what Callum would possibly want to know about _him,_ but he felt he owed him, so he said yes, of course. And Callum asked, “Why did you try to drown yourself?” 

Michael felt his blood run cold. He shouldn’t have been surprised, not really. It must have been obvious, if Callum had seen him, that he’d jumped. That it hadn’t been an accident that he’d tipped gracelessly off the end of the jetty into the loch that night — that it had been on purpose. It must have been obvious, too, that Michael hadn’t just decided to go for a late night swim.

He supposed he could’ve lied. Invented some bullshit answer, some terminal illness he could’ve been afflicted with, some tragic past that haunted him to the point of wanting to die. He didn’t, though. What would be the point, after all? What did it matter, what a dead boy knew about his life? But still, when it came to putting it into words — perhaps lying would just have been simpler. 

“I stopped loving my boyfriend,” Michael said. He didn’t stutter over the word _boyfriend_ anymore, but it still felt strange somehow to say out loud to someone new. 

Callum was frowning at him — Michael could glimpse him at the edge of his vision. “That warrants the death penalty? Not loving someone anymore?” 

“It does when you have my boyfriend,” Michael sighed, letting his head fall back against the grass. “I can’t leave him. He’d die if I left him. Or he’d kill me. I don’t know.”

He’d had his eyes closed — he opened them again to look over to Callum, because he couldn’t read his reaction in silence. Callum was looking at him, too, with the strangest expression. 

“When you were here before,” Callum said, speaking slowly, like he was picking out each word with care. “When your phone rang. That was your boyfriend? Ciaran?” 

Once again, there was that almost-familiar chill, like ice dripping down the whole length of his spine. The way Callum was looking at him, the carefully guarded tone of his voice, put Michael on edge. He nodded. 

Callum looked away from him quite suddenly, moving in that non-liminal way that Michael could only assume came with being dead — changing from one state to another with nothing in between, like frames cut out of a film. “Ciaran,” he said, so quietly he might have been talking only to himself. “I think I knew Ciaran.” 

—

“Who’s Callum McGregor?” 

Michael had known it was reckless to ask before he even opened his mouth, but if he hadn’t, the change in Ciaran’s expression would’ve been proof enough. All the colour drained from his face, and he put his fork down very, very slowly. In hindsight, Michael wondered whether he maybe should’ve asked when Ciaran wasn’t armed with cutlery. 

“Facebook suggested him in that ‘someone you may know’ thing,” Michael added quickly — he was lying, but at least this lie was a fairly plausible one. “Just wondered if he was someone you knew.”

Ciaran was looking at him in such a way that defied description. Something in his expression sent fear straight to Michael’s core — something in his eyes, just a little too wide, in his jaw set too tightly, in how still he was, in the way he didn’t even seem to be breathing. 

“Callum McGregor is dead, Michael,” Ciaran said. Michael’s heart stopped.

He pushed up from the table and ran for the door. 

—

Michael could feel the pavement scraping the skin from the soles of his bare feet as he ran, but it didn’t quite register as pain. It was almost as if it were happening to someone else, as if he were watching it rather than experiencing it. The burn in his lungs from breathing too hard was the same — there, but not. Happening, but not to him. 

Ciaran’s voice behind him, though — that was definitely real, that was definitely happening to him. It was the only thing he could hear over the rush of his own pulse in his ears and the rasp of his breath in his throat — Ciaran, screaming after him, his voice breaking around every other word.

“Mikey! Come back, Mikey! Where are you going? Where the fuck are you going? Don’t you fucking leave, Mikey! Don’t you fucking leave me!” 

—

He had to catch hold of the fencepost by the first gate so he didn’t barrel past it, he was going so fucking fast. Felt the bramble thorns twisted around it gouge into his palm and ignored it; squirmed through the gap, sucking in his breath to make himself narrower; bolted down the footpath like a dog let loose. Dirt and blood flecked Michael’s legs by the time he reached the second gate, ran right into it, felt the wind knocked out of him as his ribs struck the wood and hauled himself over the top of it anyway rather than waste time trying to fumble the latch open. Ciaran was behind him still, he knew. He’d stopped shouting but Michael knew, knew he’d still be there, giving chase. 

That was alright, though. Michael wanted him to follow. If he’d been trying to escape him, he wouldn’t have led him to a dead end. 

Beneath his bare feet the wood of the jetty was damp and slick and for one heart-stopping second as he skidded across its surface Michael thought he might coast right off the end — until a cold hand fisted into the back of his shirt, halting him in his tracks. 

“What the fuck are you doing, Michael?” Callum demanded, appearing in front of him wide-eyed and frightened. “What’s going on? What’s wrong?” 

Michael could barely draw breath, let alone speak. It took no effort to shake out of Callum’s grip, and then he turned, unsteady but determined, just at the sound of the second gate banging shut. 

“Mikey?” Ciaran’s voice was as ragged as Michael’s breathing, tearing its way out of his heaving chest. “What are you doing here, Mikey? Why are you doing this?” 

Behind the trees the sun had almost set; Ciaran was dappled in the last of its pink-gold glow as he approached, staggering a little with having run the whole way. Michael stood his ground, catching his breath. 

“I told you not to come here.” There was despair in Ciaran’s voice, far more than there was anger. Pure wretchedness, ground out through clenched teeth. “I told you not to ever come back here!” 

Michael breathed in, deep — the taste of the water lingered at the back of his throat. His voice carried across the jetty, echoed off the pines, rippled over the surface of the loch. “What did you do to Callum McGregor, Ciaran?” 

Behind him, Michael was sure he heard Callum draw breath.

By then Ciaran was almost at the far end of the jetty, and each step he took was more uneven than the last. For a moment he stopped there, swaying where he stood, and Michael almost wondered why until he realised he was sobbing. 

“I didn’t mean to, Mikey.” 

Ciaran’s voice came out small, and thick with tears. Michael’s heart pounded harder, battering against his ribs like it wanted to shatter them. Never in his life had he heard someone sound so hopelessly broken. Least of all not when confessing to murder. 

“He was going to leave me.” 

Callum’s form seemed to flicker on the edge of Michael’s vision. Ciaran must not have been able to see him — Michael didn’t imagine he’d be talking to _him,_ if he could. He was moving again now, closing the space between them with slow, faltering steps. His gaze never left Michael’s, his face contorted, mouth twisted up with emotion.

“I couldn’t let him— I couldn’t let him— Please don’t leave me too, Mikey. Please don’t leave me too.” 

Ciaran all but collapsed into Michael’s arms, so that he was forced to catch him or let them both fall. He felt heavy, leaning his whole weight into Michael’s frame, shuddering against him. Michael held him up with strength he barely knew he had. 

“I brought him here to break up.” That was Callum’s voice, soft as a breath right by Michael’s ear. There was wonder in his voice, the sound of some great truth being realised.

“We used to come here in the summer — sunbathe on the jetty, I think. With our feet in the water. I remember.” 

Michael curled his fingers into Ciaran’s shirt, drew him the slightest bit closer, trying to keep him better upright. He was weeping into the curve of Michael’s neck, his tears soaking hot into his skin. 

“It had been snowing that day. I remember, Michael. I remember the snow. I remember how cold it was, I remember—”

Ciaran had lifted his head. He cupped Michael’s face between his cold, trembling hands, and Michael stared back at him, trying his hardest not to tremble too. 

“I can’t let you leave me too. I can’t let you leave me too,” Ciaran murmured, close enough for Michael to taste his breath. Michael didn’t move. Couldn’t. It cost him enough just to breathe. “I love you, Michael. I love you so much.” 

He leant in, kissed Michael softly on the mouth, and pitched them both into the water. 

—

It wasn’t the same as before. The panic was immediate, this time, because this time Ciaran’s arms were locked around him, crushing him close as they plunged together towards the black depths of the loch. Michael couldn’t even plead. Any sound he made was lost to the water. Any movement he made only forced Ciaran’s arms tighter about him. Apart from that, though, Ciaran was utterly still. 

He could feel the burning in his lungs again. That was the same. The need to breathe so urgent and desperate it overwhelmed everything else, except this time his instinct to _swim_ was impaired by the body wrapped around him and all he could do was thrash and twist helplessly, knowing that if he breathed in it would only be water that flooded his lungs, knowing that in a few more seconds he wouldn’t be able to resist any longer. 

 _Callum,_ Michael was screaming inside his head, as the pressure in his chest built, as the terror that this was it, this was it, he was really truly going to drown after all rose. _Callum, Callum, where are you._

— 

Michael gasped awake to cold night air and cold damp wood beneath him, drenched and shivering. His drawing breath shattered a silence that had been until that moment utterly absolute — the air was still. And he was alone. Some part of him knew that as a fact without even having to look around himself — he was the kind of alone that could simply be felt. The kind of alone that needed neither proof nor evidence nor barely even second thought. It just _was._ Complete and all-encompassing. Michael didn’t need to turn his head to know that Callum wasn’t beside him, this time, waiting to ask if he still had a pulse. He didn’t need to put his hand out into the empty space around him to know that Ciaran was far beyond his reach. 

As consciousness returned to him that knowledge came with it. 

He sat slowly, waited ’til he could breath properly first. He was at the far end of the jetty, and before him him the loch stretched out calm and peaceful, like sheet glass, a black mirror for the moon and stars. It looked still enough to walk on. Quiet and calm. Slowly, fawn-like in his unsteadiness, Michael crept to the jetty’s edge, and leant out over the water without really knowing why. 

For a moment, nothing. Something cold against his cheek. Barely there, soft as a breath, just enough to raise goosebumps across his skin. 

“Callum,” Michael murmured, closing his eyes. “Thank you.” Against his mouth, the cold burned.

**Author's Note:**

> ciaran is pronounced like kieren  
> domhuisge is pronounced like do-woosh-guh or really, however you feel like, because i made it up  
> if you made it to the end of this fic you quite frankly deserve a medal and i applaud you. i REALLY appreciate comments!


End file.
